Down Hill From Here!

            March and April have been pretty exciting with the stress of exams and registration being outweighed by the fun of video games, E-Days, and several other springtime escapades!  Now there is only a month left of freshman year, and what a month it will be!

            E-Days is the event that everyone always talks about, and after E-pocalyspe Days 2012 I understand why!  I have to say that E-Days weekend was one of the best weekends I’ve had all year.  It started on a Thursday night with an awesome comedian and casino night.  Friday, school was cancelled, so instead of having to sit through classes, a large portion of the Mines students walked down Colfax all the way to the capitol building in a tradition called the Ore Cart Pull.  It was a long haul, but well worth it as we were greeted with free Chipotle burritos when we reached the end!  Friday continued with other cool activities and concluded with a techno concert in the field house.  Saturday had far less to do, but was still great fun as it involved a carnival and car show during the day and ended with another concert in the field house.  All in all it was a pretty fantastic weekend!

Ore Cart Pull... Did I mention you get free t-shirts!?

            One great thing about this last week is that, not counting finals, I am done with all of my exams this semester!!  Does this mean my life won’t be stressful?  No, but it does mean that I will have a little bit of extra relaxation time amongst my homework.  My spare time this last week has actually led to a video game crash course.   I suppose I have been at Mines Park so much recently that the boys decided to teach me to play a few of their favorite games.  I can now say that I sort of know how to play Killing Floor, Minecraft, and wait for it… Skyrim!  Gaming has never really been my thing, but it was a nice little escape from school this week!  Starting next week however, my plan is to take advantage of my extra time by reading leisurely and knitting, two things I have not done since the very beginning of school!  I’m going to kick off my reading with the Hunger Game series, and on the knitting front I’ll be choosing a pattern from a book I attained called “Knits for Nerds.”  It’s going to be great to chillax between homework sessions instead of frantically studying!

            This last weekend I decided to take a cultural adventure.  My friend Emily is Cambodian, and invited a group of people to the Cambodian New Year festivities.  We “white people” (that’s how we were referred to there) didn’t really know what to expect.  The temple turned out to be a simple house on a piece of land scattered with statues.  The festivities were for the most part like any big celebration, by which I mean there was a lot of really delicious food and a ton of people hanging out listening to music.  Probably the most interesting part of the day was a tradition that Emily has yet to explain.  Children brought with them bottles of baby powder and proceeded to chase friends and attack until everyone was powdered head to toe.  It was rather entertaining, until Emily turned her siblings against the “white people,” let’s just say we left a little bit whiter than when we came!

A statue at the Cambodian temple... And Will being a goof!